By ELLEN T. TORDESILLAS
A week after he floated an “alternative version” to the killing of Malaysian terrorist Zulkifli “Marwan”bin Hir last January which also cost the lives of 63 people, 44 of them members of the elite Special Action Force of the Philippine National Police, President Aquino yesterday belied it saying it was “baseless.”
In a televised presentation, Aquino said: “ It is clear from the presentation today: the SAF were there; we can no longer doubt that it was the SAF who took Marwan’s finger. This also means: All the other accounts about the alternative narrative are baseless, and consequently have no relevance.”
But it was he who floated what he now says are “baseless” alternative narrative.
He did it during a meeting with Inquirer editors and reporters last week.
Inquirer quoted him as saying,” Do I have closure? I still have quite a number of questions, and there are various agencies of government tasked to ferret out the truth of exactly what happened in its entirety. There is an alternative version of events that happened there, which is undergoing very intense scrutiny.”
This was his reply when asked if he had closure on the Mamasapano tragedy, that defined the incompetence and immaturity of this presidency together with the 2010 Rizal Park hostage-taking.
In his presentation yesterday, perhaps to justify his 360- degree turn, Aquino explained, “When the idea of an alternative narrative was presented to us and when we returned to the evidence, we could not dismiss it outright. This alternative version is the complete opposite of the first account of the encounter. It is our responsibility to investigate and to uncover the complete truth, so that the conclusions we arrive at will be correct and just. In doing this, we will ensure that this tragedy does not happen again. That is why we immediately ordered the various agencies of government to scrutinize other angles that present alternative narratives.”
Reliable sources said there was no serious re-investigation of the tragedy.
What happened, they said, was Aquino could not get over the findings of the PNP Board of Inquiry headed by Police Director Benjamin Magalong and the Senate Commmitee on Public Order headed by Se. Grace Poe that put the blame on him for breaking the chain- of- command and taking a direct hand in the operation through his best friend, suspended Police Chief Alan Purisima.
Many times, the source said, in the middle of a discussion the President would blurt out something about being informed of the Marwan operation almost midnight.
“He needed something to alleviate his guilt and to salve his conscience,” the source said.
He had tried to run away from it various occasions like going to a car plant inauguration instead of attending the arrival honors at the Villamor Air base for the slain SAF troopers and deleting the names of the two SAF members from the list of those that would be honored last PNP days.
In his last State-of-the –Nation Address, he cited as accomplishment the killing of Marwan but did not give credit to SAF.
His “alternative truth”, however, backfired and rekindled animosity towards him by those who sympathized with the SAF.
The source said all the officials of agencies Aquino consulted to try to come out with a version that would downgrade the role of SAF advised him against it and warned him of its implications in the 2016 elections.
Magalong told lawmakers during a budget hearing that he was willing to resign if it’s proven that he was wrong in concluding that Marwan was killed by SAF troopers.
Told yesterday of the President’s about-face statement, Magalong said, “Hindi na pala ako magre-resign (So I don’t need to resign).”